Hodd wrote:hmm i heard chosen were the wtf pawners there for a bit they have a snare aura, a thorns aura, and all other goodies + i heard there dps was way to much for the amount of dmg they could take but they were lvl 40 when talking about it so meh

Yeah, at lvl 8 they weren't that great, but I'm not gonna make any judgments until I get a little higher. At level 10 I got a snare, and evasion type ability, and a sort of intervene type ability which made pvp/scenarios/rvr a whole lot more fun. I did get rolled head to head by a level 11 Dwarf Ironbreaker. He utterly destroyed me, a Black Orc and a Witch Elf. Left me scratching my head. I'm guessing either the class is stronger earlier on than Chosen or that guy just had amazing gear for his level.

hes got his first set of renown gear on most likely. thats why

I was actually reading in the IGN WAR forum and someone was saying it was due to Keep gear. No idea how to get it but I wants me some.

And Salt, if it makes you feel any better, I was playing my warrior in WoW earlier and some Belf rogue named Saltshak'ar ganked the shit out of me in Tanaris.

Rank 10 (levels) and Renown rank 8 (PvP levels) i believe. then you goto a tier 2 keep and go buy it. i think all of it together is around 2g

Hodd wrote:hmm i heard chosen were the wtf pawners there for a bit they have a snare aura, a thorns aura, and all other goodies + i heard there dps was way to much for the amount of dmg they could take but they were lvl 40 when talking about it so meh

Yeah, at lvl 8 they weren't that great, but I'm not gonna make any judgments until I get a little higher. At level 10 I got a snare, and evasion type ability, and a sort of intervene type ability which made pvp/scenarios/rvr a whole lot more fun. I did get rolled head to head by a level 11 Dwarf Ironbreaker. He utterly destroyed me, a Black Orc and a Witch Elf. Left me scratching my head. I'm guessing either the class is stronger earlier on than Chosen or that guy just had amazing gear for his level.

hes got his first set of renown gear on most likely. thats why

I was actually reading in the IGN WAR forum and someone was saying it was due to Keep gear. No idea how to get it but I wants me some.

And Salt, if it makes you feel any better, I was playing my warrior in WoW earlier and some Belf rogue named Saltshak'ar ganked the shit out of me in Tanaris.

Mark stopped by the forums a bit ago and gave us an update on the Preview Weekend. Things they have found that need fixing, including the hottest topic around, r10 rr6 players going to tier 2 and getting gear then coming back to tier 1 scenarios.

Folks,

Okay, it was a wild and crazy weekend in WAR and while some of you might be tempted to go all Samurai on us for a couple of the bugs, overall things went very, very well. As long-time readers of my notes now, I won’t do a Nick Winters and we are anything but pathological liars so we’ll always own up when we make a mistake and we made a couple here. So, let’s talk amongst ourselves and have a little chat about the top nine list of the biggest issues and where we stand in regards to them.

(1) Client Crashes – I’ve talked about this as one of the reasons why we didn’t release the NDA until recently. Here’s the current status.
- Just a little too many currently. While we are better off than we were in beta, we must do better still before release.
- A number of players will lower spec machines had more CTDs than higher spec machines.
- Number of fixes already in pipeline. They are working their way through our testing servers and will be pushed to the players once they have been vetted internally.
- Engineering time for CTD issue has remained heavily committed; our top engineers are working on the various issues.

(2) Monster Pathing and AI – Well, what can I say other than not even all of King Tut’s wealth could have made us feel better for messing up on this one. Well, maybe all his wealth. 
- “Yes, that monster seems to be behaving a little oddly”. Monster responsiveness was very sketchy, odd pauses and tethering issues.
- “Oh, was I supposed to go in that direction?” Pathing sometimes wonky - mobs get stuck or go in wrong direction.
- Utter confusion at times as both monsters and pets will engage and disengage seemingly at random
- Internal server optimizations last week broke the pathing/AI. And I mean really, really broke it. This truly was a “Opps, we broke this code” moment for us and we don’t have many of them.
- Going to ensure that this problem is fixed this week. As I said in my first Preview Weekend, this is a major concern for us. Fortunately we have no underwater combat in this game or some of the NPCs may have been appropriately dubbed land sharks.

(3) Pet Responsiveness – With similar issues to Monster Pathing and AI, this was not our finest hour.
- Need to transfer "combat responsiveness" fixes to pets - have pet move immediately on button press.
- “Oh no, Mr. Bill!” Pets suffer from same pathing and lack of response as general monsters. Pets hopping around like they were headed to Del Staters.

(4) Global Cooldown Timers –This seems to be a hot topic for players to talk about. However, things aren’t always as they seem.
- Reality and perception are two different things, Warhammer has a GCD of 1.4s, WoW has 1.5s
- Need to improve on the feeling of sluggishness of the GCD and UI.
- Or is it really 2.0 seconds? Bug with display where our timer shows 2s when it is really 1.4
- Next in line please? We will add in better "slop timer" to allow players 0.3s extra to pre-queue a second ability followup.
- “Ability not ready” messaging needs to be improve, a sound effect if Global Cooldown in effect, maybe more cowbell?

(5) Client Performance – This is one of those issues
- Need better scalers on effects, sounds, graphics, etc to help lower end machines (already lots of additions to coders)
- This thing loves memory like Dan Aykroyd loves bass. We have already improved the memory consumption of the client and taken 100M out of current test best.

(6) Better animations
- So much more coming in the next two versions of the client. We are currently incorporating serious amounts of new animations into the game. Hopefully nobody will sneak a coneheads model into the game.
- Look at what my XXXX does now? Over the next month we will address many class-attack specific issues across all 20 careers.
- “U think you can dance?” Nope, but we have added new racial animations for movement, fidgets and redid some emotes.

(7) Texture Blurring
- Textures are currently cached in a manner that results in blurriness on entering a region.
- We will look at adding a client scalar.

(8) Targeting, Camera, etc
- Currently our targeting system differs from many MMOs in terms of our features and how we go about things. We will identify and make a more standard initial setup but allow flexibility.
- Will add additional keybinding selections to allow flexibility

(9) Renown rank gear
- Unfortunately, a new bug (well an old bug we fixed and then managed to break again) which allowed Rank 10 RR 6 players can go to Tier 2 to get better gear and then come back to Tier 1 and own scenarios. We are currently working on a fix.

Well, things have been, as usual, busy here at Mythic so I have lots of news to share. So, without further ado and no SNL references, here's the update on my update:

1) Significantly improved NPC pathing - Okay, in all fairness it wouldn't have taken much to improve on what we showed you folks during the PW. However, the NPC pathing is back to where it needs to be and while it still isn't perfect, well, it's a heck of a lot closer than it was just a short time ago. We identified a whole lot of bugs and squashed them.

2) Improved pet commands and responsivness - Well, pretty much same as above. Pets will no longer act as if obeying an order from you was the last thing in this world that they wanted to do.

3) Fixed an issue with textures blurring - Nothing like looking at textures through a blurred lens to make things look really sharp eh? Major improvements in and more OTW.

4) Enhanced Global Cooldown Mechanic - Well, for one the GCD actually shows the correct cooldown time and not the rounded up cooldown time (Hey, what a great idea, let's make it seem slower than it is. WOOT!). The slop timer is working fine right now and we'll continue to look at making the GCD and combat in general more responsive.

5) Continuing to improve Client Stability - As always, lots of fixes going in here. The client is supposed to be more stable (and looks like it so far) but until we get the masses back in...

6) Added new Graphics Settings and seeking more feedback from testers to guide future improvements. You asked for it, you got it. Well, in all fairness we were going to put these in anyway but it never hurts to nudge us a bit at times.

9) Increased bonus for medal winners in PQs. PQs are supposed to be fun, joyous and not grindy. We'll continue tweaking and changing them wherever we need to do that to make it so #1. (okay, a ST reference)

10) Added more loot bags in Tier 1 PQs - Boy, it's going to be rather crowded when we launch so we just upped the loot for the Tier 1 PQs. We'll do the same to T2 as needed. And when the rush is over, we'll tweak downwards.

So, in terms of some other good stuff, lots and lots and lots of bugs fixed and lots of new stuff added to the ToK. But wait, there's more and we'll address some of it next week as well as more coming info in the next update.

Oh, and there's still no such thing as a miracle patch so don't expect one here. Just a ton of fixes, additions and adjustments. We have another major patch coming as well before launch. We don't believe in miracle patches (miracle whip is a whole other subject) here at Mythic but simply hard work and a talented team.

Much respect to my team that is really doing one heck of a job getting things ready for launch.

Yeah Mythic is also getting huge props for being open and honest about what they are doing (or messing up) in game -trying to make their potential clients feel involved and informed. Seems they are trying to break the tradition of hiding everything that goes on with the game behind a curtain (for now at least).

Yeah Mythic is also getting huge props for being open and honest about what they are doing (or messing up) in game -trying to make their potential clients feel involved and informed. Seems they are trying to break the tradition of hiding everything that goes on with the game behind a curtain (for now at least).

As a programmer myself, I totally appreciate that... I am a little amazed they have upper management that allows it

I have one more question... I looked for some forums where I could post, but am not sure where the best place is... unless they read the IGN forums linked in that story?

Anyway, I have two questions:
1. Is anyone testing on Vista 64-bit? Does it work alright?
2. Does it take advantage of more than one graphics card (like my nVidia SLI setup or ATI's crossfire)?

I am running Vista 64-bit and have two SLI graphics cards setup.
I see on their website that Vista is listed for reqs, so that's fine - but nothing about Vista 64-bit.

Where should I post this so it will be read? Or where is the best place to search for this already being answered somewhere?